These HN comments are both uplifting and wild to me at the same time. I live downtown Toronto, work on Bay St and all I hear is how insane we are allowing all these people to kill themselves with MAID, even on the occasions I log onto twitter, if Canadian stuff comes up I always see some "omg the Canadians are crazy all killing themselves" - I always thought MAID was great but had started to wonder if I'm wrong headed about that.
You can talk to real people that work or live in a hospice or care home to better understand the death process (they need volunteers for all sorts of stuff). Or look into the formal studies that have been done on the Canadian side.
Controversial cases aside, MAID is more the scheduling of an event that can be seen coming from quite a ways away. I have family members that work in hospice care, and the reality of death makes it seem cruel not to allow MAID.
This isn't healthy people offing themselves when they turn 90. This is people seeing a slow and certain decline and loss of dignity due to a known illness. If you knew that your last six months would be extremely painful, you would lose the ability to walk, lose concentration to have a cogent conversation, not be able to go to the bathroom by yourself, and finally your body would just shut down; wouldn't you want the option to shorten or skip out on the final parts of that experience?
Yeah, I hear that in the west as well. I’m relatively young, but enjoy having chats at the park and cafes around me, where median age is probably 50+. So, you get to hear personal stories from people who lost someone in recent times. Obviously there’s always reluctance in discussions as well, like “that person is very strong, I don’t think I’d be able to sign up for that”. But they usually end with “I’m glad that they passed away on their own terms”. I think there’s a disconnect between our social circles (ages 25-50) and supermajority of people who end up taking MAiD way out (70+). So, we don’t hear the heartbreaking but peaceful stories that often.
